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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton


22

CHAPTER II

AS THE DANCERS poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back
behind the projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the
grotesquely muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now
and then lit up a face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers,
being afoot, were the first to climb the slope to the main street,
while the country neighbours packed themselves more slowly into
the sleighs under the shed.

“Ain’t you riding, Mattie?” a woman’s voice called back from the
throng about the shed, and Ethan’s heart gave a jump. From where
he stood he could not see the persons coming out of the hall till
they had advanced a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the
storm-door; but through its cracks he heard a clear voice answer:
“Mercy no! Not on such a night.” She was there, then, close to him,
only a thin board between. In another moment she would step
forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed to the obscurity,
would discern her as clearly as though she stood in daylight. A
wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the wall,
and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known
to her. It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from
the first, she, the quicker, finer, more expressive, instead of
crushing him by the contrast, had given him something of her own
ease and freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his
student days, when he had tried to “jolly” the Worcester girls at a
picnic.

He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few
yards of him.

She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking
uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show
himself. Then a man’s figure approached, coming so close to her
that under their formless wrappings they seemed merged in one
dim outline.

“Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that’s tough! No, I
wouldn’t be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain’t as low-
down as that.” (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) “But look a
here, ain’t it lucky I got the old man’s cutter down there waiting for
us?” Frome heard the girl’s voice, gaily incredulous: “What on
earth’s your father’s cutter doin’ down there?” “Why, waiting for
me to take a ride. I got the roan colt too. I kinder knew I’d want to
take a ride to-night,” Eady, in his triumph, tried to put a
sentimental note into his bragging voice.
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